


It's Nice to Have a Friend

by small_spyglass



Category: X-Men Evolution
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:47:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23365669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/small_spyglass/pseuds/small_spyglass
Summary: Kitty's first days at the Xavier Institute: getting caught up on the sophomore English syllabus, awkwardly making friends with the German exchange student/fellow baby X-Man, and trying to figure out what strange blue creature is haunting the halls of the Institute at night.
Relationships: Kitty Pryde & Kurt Wagner, Kitty Pryde/Kurt Wagner
Comments: 25
Kudos: 47





	1. Chapter 1

Kitty Pryde’s first ever sleepover had ended in disaster. She’d been eight at the time, young for a fourth grader. Her parents had agreed to let her skip the third grade after the principal herself had talked to them — and while it was something family members sent her congratulations cards about, it didn’t give her much social cache at school. All her old friends were far off in the third-grader hallway with Mrs. Johnson and Ms. Reynolds. The fourth-grader hallway was literally on the other side of Deerfield Elementary.

But things started to change for her when she’d been invited to Eric Moore’s _Space Jam_ -themed birthday party. Even though literally everyone in their class had been invited and the party itself had been nothing to write home about (all the boys in their class just wanted to chase the prettier girls around with water balloons), Kayla, one of the cool girls in Mrs. Schmidt’s class had noticed Kitty, had actually talked to her a bit.

She hadn’t expected to be handed a bright pink envelope the very next week, her name written in elegant cursive from an adult’s practiced hand: Katherine Pryde. Glitter had spilled out of the invitation card as soon as she opened it, but even the gentle reprimand from Mrs. Schmidt that she shouldn’t have gotten pink and purple glitter all over the hallway floor didn’t quell Kitty’s excitement.

On the card, a regal Pocahontas stood next to the words: You’re Invited to Kayla’s 10th Birthday Party! And there had been instructions of what to bring - a sleeping bag, a pillow, toothbrush… It was a real, actual slumber party, which Kitty had so far only read about in her monthly issues of _American Girl_ magazine. She wondered if they would drink Sprite through Twizzlers straws and watch the _Princess Bride._ (These had been activities recommended by the aforementioned magazine.)

Only four other girls in her class had been invited over, which added to the specialness of it all. Her parents had assured her she’d make friends amongst these older, cooler kids in the fourth grade, and Kitty had been relieved that her parents were still right about the world, that she could still trust the reassuring things they said to her. Everything would be all right. She would be all right.

The sleepover itself started out a little slow but everyone warmed up quickly, talking about which Spice Girl they would all be. (Everyone wanted to be Baby, Posh or Ginger. Kitty was informed she was probably a Sporty Spice.) And then there was cheese pizza and they all sang happy birthday to Kayla while she blew out candles on a chocolate cake that came decorated with plastic Pocahontas and Meeko figurines. Kayla got those, but Kitty and the other girls received plastic Pocahontas rings, which Kitty thought was more than fair. It wasn’t their birthdays after all.

And they did drink Sprite through Twizzlers straws. No movie though. Instead, Kayla wanted to play Truth or Dare. The _American Girl_ magazine had mentioned this game, too, but Kitty wasn’t prepared for how on the spot she felt about it or the way her stomach twisted in warning.

Two girls went before Kitty, both picking “truth,” which Kayla complained was boring.

Then, “Kitty, truth or dare?”

She hesitated, not sure which was worse. She wasn’t wearing a training bra yet and didn’t have a crush on anyone in class - to admit these things, especially in front of these girls, seemed like willingly putting one’s head in the guillotine.

“She’s going to pick truth,” Kayla said flatly, taking her hesitation as Kitty backing away from a dare. “Isn’t anyone going to pick dare?”

“Fine. Dare.” The others whooped and for a shining moment, Kitty felt triumphant. She’d shown them she was brave.

“Ok, Kitty,” Kayla said slowly, clearly savoring this moment. “I dare you to drink an entire glass of mystery drink.”

Before Kitty could even ask what a mystery drink was, Kayla was leading the charge to the kitchen, ordering Kitty to stay put in the living room. After a few long minutes of loud giggling, the others came back with a Garfield coffee mug filled with a dark brown viscous liquid that had a sliced up pickle floating in it along with a limp whirl of Cheez Whiz.

Kitty drew back in horror. “What is that?”

“It’s a mystery drink,” Kayla explained to her, as though it were patently obvious. “And you have to drink it.”

“We only put real food in it,” another girl, Alexis, added quickly to reassure Kitty, whose eyes must have been huge. She’d expected to have to prank call a Domino’s or like, do a weird dance on the front lawn in her pajamas. Not… this.

She gingerly took the mug with both hands (it was really full) and immediately gagged as the horrible blend of sweet and sour and savory rose up to her nose. She couldn’t do this, she couldn’t do this, she couldn’t —

“You have to do this,” Kayla said flatly. “You chose dare. Those are the rules.”

“But,” Kitty began.

“It’s my birthday,” Kayla continued. “Don’t be such a baby.”

The four other girls watched this exchange with interest, but said nothing. Alexis, the closest Kitty probably had to a friend there, looked down at the beige carpet.

It seemed the only way out was through. If she could do this one thing, this one disgusting thing, maybe she could stay in the cool fourth grade girl club. She could have actual friends again. She wouldn't feel a stab of loneliness when she looked out the classroom window and saw the third graders and younger kids out at recess.

Kitty sucked in one last bit of fresh air and held it tight. In one quick move, she drew the dreadful brew up to her lips, wrenched her jaws apart and took a huge slug. Deep in her core, her stomach immediately twisted at the incoming assault of greasy, chunky texture and shifting flavors of pickle-meets-marshmallow fluff-meets-mustard-meets God knew what else. She swallowed fast, not wanting to let it linger long in her mouth, but as soon as she did, it was like her entire system backed up in refusal.

Hot, acidic liquid came pouring back out with an awful splatter. Tears sprung into her eyes, both from the physical pain of it and the pressure of Kayla and everyone else watch her make a literal mess of herself. It was like all her bad dreams come to life. She was so stupid, so embarrassing. She wanted to melt right through the floor.

Somewhere in all the shock, someone ran to get Kayla’s mom, who called Kitty’s parents to, mercifully, come pick her up. Kayla’s mom made her stand outside on their front porch to wait, because she smelled so bad. Kayla had whined when her mom tried to give Kitty some of Kayla's clothes to at least change in to, so Kitty had to just wait in her own vomit-y grossness.

And of course, the next day her humiliation was all anyone could talk about, how Kitty Pryde had thrown up all over Kayla Weiler’s living room and her mom had to come get her, and what a weird, gross crybaby she was, how she shouldn’t have been allowed to skip a grade because she clearly couldn’t handle a big kid’s sleepover...

* 

The plane gently dipped down through the clouds. The flight attendants sprang into action, plucking empty plastic cups from people’s trays with lightning speed.

Kitty wasn’t quite sure what had made her revisit that old childhood humiliation (though she has a good guess), and she tried to put it out of her mind as the pilot announced they were landing in 30 minutes. She wasn't that scared fourth grader anymore. She'd eventually made some friends, had gotten good grades, it had all turned out fine. (Kayla was still a jerk, though.) And besides, it wasn’t like the X-Men were going to make her suffer some kind of Xavier Institute hazing via condiment slurry.

Jean Grey had just seemed so adult when Kitty had met her, even though she was just two years older than Kitty. And she obviously knew all about… mutants. That was the word she and Professor Xavier had used. They’d said it neutrally, as though it wasn’t laced with a million other synonyms: unnatural, freakish, strange. All the things Kitty had tried (and failed) to convince herself she wasn’t for years, only to have two strangers show up and tell her she’d actually been right all along. Oops.

Back on the ground again, Kitty pulled her two purple rolling suitcases behind her as she made her way through the airport, scanning the crowds for—

“Kitty! Hi!” Jean Grey pulled her into a quick hug, leaving a cloud of flowery perfume behind when she pulled away. “It’s so good to see you again! How was your flight?”

“Totally fine,” Kitty chirped, trying to reflect Jean’s cheerfulness back at her and not admit that it had been her first flight by herself ever and that she’d changed out of her sweaty-from-anxiety T-shirt as soon as she’d landed.

“Here, let me help you with that.” Jean leaned over and took hold of one of Kitty’s suitcases by the handle. Kitty couldn't help noticing the freshly done manicure. “I’m over in short-term parking. Everyone is so excited to have you join us at the Institute. What's your favorite kind of cake, by the way? We're thinking of doing a little New X-Men celebration.”

"Um, chocolate...?"

Jean was a surprisingly fast talker. Maybe in the context of trying to convince a scared sophomore that she should join the X-Men, Jean had forced herself to slow down and speak calmly. _Like reassuring a nervous horse,_ Kitty thought.

Now, though, Jean was in full-on Welcome mode and giving Kitty a rundown of everyone who currently resided at the Institute. It was a flurry of information, but Kitty processed and catalogued it all in her brain with the level of thoroughness she did for any other school subject.

Professor Xavier was in charge. Duh. Ororo, known as Storm, and Logan, known as Wolverine, were referred to by Jean as ‘instructors.’ (Though what classes they taught was unclear to Kitty.) Scott and Jean had been at the Institute the longest, Scott since he was a kid. And a German boy named Kurt was the newest member.

“There’s only three of you?” she asked. “The way the professor made it sound…”

It only took Jean a moment to recover. “Well, we’re actively recruiting,” she said smoothly. “The professor only recently figured out a way to find mutants more efficiently. There are a lot more of us than you’d think.”

“How does he do that?” Kitty asked, but they had reached the car by this point and Jean let the unanswered question go without responding. Kitty thought about asking again, but she didn’t want to come off as pushy — Jean struck her as a probable Cool Girl, sort of like a more grown up Kayla Weiler (who, coincidentally, had also been a redhead). And just like with Kayla back when, Kitty just wanted Jean to like her. And she knew there was nothing more uncool than not knowing when to drop something.

Jean smoothly hauled Kitty’s overpacked suitcases and even her bulky backpack into the back of the sleek SUV, and Kitty slid into the front passenger seat. It still smelled vaguely of new car and Kitty had the feeling no greasy drive-thru food had ever been passed through its windows.

Not knowing what else to ask, Kitty said, “So, what’s like, everyone’s power?”

Jean winced ever so slightly, but enough that Kitty noticed. She scrambled to recover from the awkwardness. “I’m sorry. Forget I asked,” she mumbled. Heat blasted across her face. Maybe in the mutant world this was an invasive question, like talking about religion or politics, but how was Kitty to even know that? She had no idea what the rules were.

“No, it’s ok.” It was back to Jean’s slowed down, calm-the-nervous-horse voice. “It’s normal to want to know. But it doesn’t feel like my information to share, if you know what I mean.”

Kitty wanted so desperately to melt into the seat; she caught herself beginning to phase through just in time and, with a gasp of horror, solidified again. She did not want to end up a pancake in the middle of the highway. She wrapped her slender arms around herself, trying to hold everything together.

“It’s really ok, Kitty” Jean reassured her. Her hands were on the wheel, two o’clock and ten o’clock. She glanced worriedly over at her, and continued, “That’s a pretty normal question to want to ask, so I get it. Just wait ’til we get to the Institute, though, and it’ll be a good icebreaker instead.” Kitty must have still looked stricken. “Everyone is really welcoming. You’ll see; you’ll fit right in.”

*

Jean was about half-right. Everyone _was_ really welcoming to Kitty, even Mr. Logan, who politely nodded at Kitty whenever they happened to cross paths at the Institute. She had a feeling that the most Mr. Logan was capable of in regards to teenagers was tolerating them, so head nods in passing seemed a good sign.

The second part, the fitting-in part, wasn’t coming so easy. Mostly because the Institute was, as she had suspected, huge and also very empty. And she’d arrived in the middle of the week, with everyone’s schedules all over the place, while she was left with nothing to do, but try to make her new bedroom feel less cavernous and more cozy, and get hopelessly lost every time she wanted a snack from the kitchen.

There were a lot of books to read, though. The professor maintained an impressive library. And since she didn’t start school for another week and had no one to talk to, Kitty threw herself into other people’s stories where she could forget where she was and what she was. Plus, she figured if she could get a jump on the sophomore advanced English reading list, she’d be in good shape for starting in the middle of spring semester. Jean had found out for her that the sophomores were in the middle of _Jane Eyre,_ which Kitty had read before back in eighth grade. The character of Bertha had really freaked her out then and she’d slept with the light on for at least two nights.

Now it wasn’t the creepiness of Mr. Rochester's insane wife keeping her up, but more the strangeness of trying to get used to a bed that still didn’t feel like hers in a place that didn’t feel like home yet - if it would ever.

She’d never spent a night not at home after that sleepover in the fourth grade, expect the yearly visit to her aunt and uncle’s in Ann Arbor, but her parents were still close by in the guest bedroom, not far from where she slept on her aunt and uncle’s faux leather couch.

Kitty rolled over in bed and pulled her dragon plushie, Lockheed, in closer, tucking him under her chin. She still felt like such a kid for sleeping with a stuffed animal and had almost left him in Illinois, but she was glad she didn't.

Sometimes she wished her parents had put up more of a fight about her leaving to come here. They’d seemed, well, not cheerful that she was going to live somewhere else, but calm about it, confident, like it was the right, natural choice. How she’d imagined they’d be if she was going off to college.

As soon as she’d said she wanted to go, a small part of her immediately wished she could take it back. Her parents trusted Kitty to make good decisions for herself, and once she'd made it clear she was on board with going to the Xavier Institute, they were convinced. She was regretting her decision even more now.

Kitty rolled back over again, twisting herself up in the comforter, as a wave of grief for her old life in Illinois, back when she was only weird by normal high school standards, hit her like a slab of concrete. She scrunched up her face to try to stop herself from crying, but it made her stomach hurt, so she just let it out into the starchy pillowcase to prevent anyone else from hearing her. She didn’t know if someone had secret supersonic hearing or something. And in the middle of all this, she mourned how she hadn’t even thought to bring her own pillow with its familiar-smelling pillowcase from home. A tragic error.

Finally, once she was spent, annoyed and officially tired, she groggily walked across the hall to splash warm water on her itchy, post-crying face. That’s when she first saw it.

She’d just lightly shut the bathroom door behind, heading back to her room, when she heard a quiet cough and got the eerie sensation she wasn’t alone. She stood sharply at attention, not daring to breathe, suddenly very, very awake. She rushed to reassure herself. She’d made it up, she’d misheard, it was a creepy mutant mansion and—

There it was. A soft, creeping movement in the dark, somewhere above her. Then it stopped. Like it knew'd heard it now and was waiting to see what she would do.

Kitty didn’t want to look, but she had to. She couldn't not. Because this is what it would take to vanquish it, like all the other basement and under-the-bed monsters her imagination sometimes made up for her. So, she looked up.

Wild glowing eyes looked back down. A tail whisked somewhere in the darkness, the only movement between the two of them.

Kitty’s first instinct was to scream, but it was like she was in one of her nightmares and no sound came out but a sort of too high-pitched rasp of breath, like she’d just wasted all her energy on crying her eyes out 15 minutes ago and now she couldn’t produce anything more, so no one would hear her and come rescue her.

The thing released its grip from the ceiling and somersaulted neatly down, landing on all fours then drawing up to standing. It tried to say something, reaching a strange-looking hand towards her, but Kitty drew back. Her heart dropped down into the pit of her stomach, like a stone was being dropped into a pond, like she was sinking, like the world was falling away, like…

Damn it.

She found herself in the downstairs kitchen. She'd half-landed on a bowl of fruit, leftover from breakfast that morning, that had been left in the middle of the kitchen table. She wasn’t sure what was more bruised: her tailbone or the oranges.

Kitty was terrified to go back upstairs to her room, and paced the kitchen, watching the clock on the microwave. After 20 minutes, she forced herself to go back upstairs, turning on hallway lights as she went, but when she returned to the spot where she’d accidentally phased through the floor, there was nothing there. No monster hanging from the ceiling... Nothing.

*

Kitty was in what felt, three days in, the only truly comforting place at the Institute: the library. Huge windows that overlooked the front lawn, comfy armchairs and couches, and, obviously, books. Jean had told Kitty that usually everyone had breakfast together, but Kitty, who had always been an early morning person, had determined that there were actually two breakfast groups. Mr. Logan and herself at 7 a.m. and presumably everyone else at some point an hour later.

But she didn’t want to do the awkward thing of trying to come up with a reason to go back to the kitchen and make small talk while the others were eating, so she'd gone to the library with her book. She'd just gotten to the part where Mr. Rochester disguised himself as a fortune teller to try to make Jane jealous when she realized she had company.

“Oh. Hello,” said a gentle voice, pronouncing “hello” more like “hull-low.” She arched her back a little to see over back of the couch, but otherwise remained in her limb-twisty (but comfy) reading position. Her parents always joked that their daughter’s back-up career should be with the circus as a contortionist. “I didn’t realize anyone was in here,” he said.

“Hey,” she said to the dark-haired boy. She was wondering when she would meet this last member of the X-Men, the German exchange student. Kitty was surprised that he looked so… American. Not that she’d expected him to be wearing full-on lederhosen, but weren’t Europeans supposed to dress better than Americans? More classy neutrals and less… what this guy was wearing: baggy layers, casual slouchy style. That’s what her friend Beverly had told her anyway, after she’d come back from a two-week trip to Spain. Kitty’s heart squeezed a bit, homesick for her old friends, her old life. 

“I’m Kurt Wagner,” he was saying to her, as he moved more fully into the study. He walked with shoulders hunched slightly forward, like he'd spent a lifetime making himself small and foldable. Or he just had naturally bad posture.

“Kitty.” She un-pretzeled herself and stood up, using her index finger as a bookmark to keep her place. “I’m the newbie.”

He laughed and his shoulders straightened a bit. “Ja, I know. I heard a cute girl from Illinois was arriving.”

She rolled her eyes, but was pleased by the choice of adjective. She knew she could never hope for ‘beautiful’ - that was a word reserved for Jean Grey girls, but ‘cute’ was always reassuring, a bar she knew she could reasonably hit.

“When are you starting?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“At Bayville. The high school,” he clarified.

“Next Monday. I would have started sooner, but I there was some kind of mix-up getting my transcript from my old school over, so it's like I get an extra Spring Break." 

"Wow, that's lucky!" 

The biggest, most pressing concern - the one she’d been trying to put aside by diving deep into _Jane Eyre_ \- bubbled up to the surface again. “What year are you?” Kitty asked.

“I’m a sophomore.”

She sighed in relief. “Me too,” she said. Maybe they would have some classes together. Kitty might actually know someone on her first day.

 _This is how desperate I am,_ she thought. _I don’t even know this kid._

“I’ve never just started over at a brand-new school before,” she said.

He started to say something, paused, changed course. “It’s nice at Bayville. People there are kind.”

Kitty snorted. “I bet. Like, is that any high school anywhere?”

“Well, maybe I’m putting a positive spin on things,” he said, holding up his hands in supplication. He smiled sheepishly. “I don’t want to scare you off. But I promise, it’s really not that bad for a high school.”

“Maybe you’re just shielded from the worst of it by being from an exciting foreign land,” she joked. “Illinois isn’t nearly as impressive.”

He made a show of running a hand through his hair, and gave a little toss of his head, like someone in a Garnier Fructis commercial. “Are you saying I’m impressive?”

They grinned at each other, and Kitty felt a surge of fondness for this mysterious German boy. She didn’t know anything about him, but at least this was the first almost normal conversation she’d had since arriving. “I didn’t have a ton of friends at my old school,” she admitted. “And the ones I did have, it took me a long time to find them, you know?”

“You’ve found one here at least. That’s already a promising start.”

His ease in implying that he already considered them friends threw her off, but she was grateful for it anyway.

 _Desperate,_ her inner critic whispered in sing-song. _He’s just being nice._

“Um, thanks,” she said. Her cheeks warmed and she busied herself with readjusting the bookmark in her book, trying to get her hair to fall over her face to hide her blushing. She hoped he wasn’t getting the wrong idea. She blushed all the time.

He glanced at the aggressively clunky watch strapped to his wrist. “I do have somewhere I need to be right now, but I’ll see you later? I want to see for myself this phasing ability of yours.”

So he already knew about that. So much for Jean’s ‘don’t share other people’s powers’ policy. She was about to ask him what his power was right as he did a cheeky salute, then vanished in a small puff of sulfurous smoke.

She shuddered, glad Kurt wasn’t there to see because she wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings. “I’ll never get used to this place,” she said to the empty room.

*

True to his word, Kurt Wagner did become Kitty’s friend, almost through sheer force of will. At first she wasn’t sure if he just felt sorry for her or worse, thought she was attainable in a way Jean Grey clearly wasn’t, but the high-wire tension in the back of her brain started to ease. Kurt did glancingly flirt with her a little bit, but she had a feeling he just liked back-and-forth banter. She never saw him be more delighted than when he felt like he had won someone over, whether that was the disaffected 20-something in the drive-thru at Gut Bomb or someone like Mr. Logan, who seemed both charmed by Kurt and annoyed that he was charmed. He made her laugh, and, surprisingly, she made him laugh, though not always intentionally. But he was unwaveringly kind; he never made her feel like he was laughing _at_ her.

Her weird thing with Lance had left her feeling a bit wary of teenage boys, especially ones who knew she could walk through walls. But Kurt never asked her to do anything with her powers that would benefit him in any way. He just thought they were cool in and of themselves.

Only once did he off-handedly mention that the two of them would be a great criminal duo. “No security system in the world would stand a chance against us,” he’d said after they’d finished watching _Ocean’s Eleven._ “Can you imagine? Teleportation and phasing? We could break into any bank or casino that we wanted to.”

But when he’d seen her still expression, he’d quickly joked, “Or we could just stop the bad guys. You know, I don’t think I’m up for a life of crime. Sounds very boring to me.”

She’d thought about telling him about Lance - that there had been a boy she thought maybe liked her, who had been kinda mean to everyone else but was nice to her, which made her feel special, seen. But he actually just wanted to use her as a walking master key to get whatever he wanted.

When she started to say anything about this first experience with another mutant, it was like she was suddenly standing outside herself and could see how stupid and naive she’d been. Kitty didn’t want Kurt to see her that way, too.

And he was just so plainly, enthusiastically interested in her, the person Kitty. Not just the mutant. So what did it matter? She could pretend that maybe Kurt was the first mutant boy she’d befriended, not Lance Alvers back in middle-of-nowhere Illinois.

Kurt wanted to know all about Deerfield and her childhood running around Illinois suburbia. She even told him about the ill-fated sleepover, which left him extremely offended on her behalf. And he told her about growing up in a small German village and all the shenanigans he got up to there, like the many times he tried to run away to join the circus.

“Why the circus?” she’d asked.

“Ja, well, you know…” He smiled shyly and Kitty’s heart did a strange little cartwheel of its own. “The acrobats seemed so cool. They were always soaring through the air, doing what should be impossible.” He came back down to Earth with one of his characteristic grins. “And making the audience’s butts sweat as they watched.”

“Wow, the thrill of butt sweat.” She elbowed him in the side. “You wouldn’t want to be a circus clown?”

“Come on, Kitty. You know I’m way too serious for that.”

So, all in all, that first half-week and full weekend at the Institute wasn’t just fine, but actually good. And waiting another week before starting school would be fine, too, even though she'd started to look forward to it — according to the class schedule Bayville High had mailed over, she and Kurt would share a few classes after all. But at least there'd be a little extra time for reading what she wanted before all the homework really started rolling in, and more time to hang out with the others, mostly Kurt.

Scott and Jean were friendly, and Kitty had had several good, not even that awkward of conversations with both of them, but they both strongly exuded older sibling vibes. Happy to chat with Kitty and give her advice, but she wasn’t going to be their new best friend any time soon. Kurt seemed to feel the same as Kitty, which was why even when all four of them were together, they ended up in a natural split: Jean and Scott walking ahead, Kurt and Kitty walking behind. No one minded, though.

But there was one thing Kitty couldn’t let go: her blue ceiling monster... thing. Whatever it was. She hadn’t seen it since her first night there, but the longer the image lingered in her mind, the more she was sure it was a real memory - not a dream or first-night anxieties making her see things that weren’t there.

There was something else living in the Institute and it wasn’t human - or mutant. And she was going to find it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At long last, a second chapter! My only excuse is the whole global pandemic thing… Just planning on one more chapter after this one. Hope you enjoy!

Kitty leaned against the doorframe to her bedroom, holding her second mug of coffee to keep her company while she watched the Monday morning antics of frantic high schoolers moving (and teleporting) up and down the hallway. She was exactly six days into being an official resident of the Xavier Institute and was enjoying being apparently the only person in the place (besides Mr. Logan) who never had to hit the snooze button.

“Do you want a ride or not, Kurt?” Scott demanded on the other end of the hall.

There was a short burst of frustrated German, then he suddenly appeared before Kitty looking panicked. “Have you seen my geometry textbook? There’s an open book test today and—”

“Sorry, I—” Kitty barely got even that out before she was coughing on sulfur. Kurt had already teleported away.

Scott thundered past Kitty, backpack slung over one broad shoulder, calling back, “That’s it, I’m leaving!” But Jean called out from the girls’ bathroom, “Wait, Scott! I need a ride, too!”

Scott immediately stalled out, annoyedly checking his watch as he waited at the top of the stairs, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and trying to act like he hadn’t just gone back on his threat to drive off without them.

“I thought Duncan was giving you rides now,” he said loudly, emphasis on the name ‘Duncan,’ as though the name itself left a sour taste in his mouth.

Jean popped her head out of the bathroom, hair straightener in one hand and brush in the other. “He had an early practice this morning and my hair is a mess.”

“It looks fine, Jean.”

She made a frustrated sound at his lack of recognition that her hair was obviously Not Fine and ducked back into the bathroom to continue her hair-straightening mission.

“I’m not insane, right? It looks exactly the same.”

It took a second for Kitty to realize Scott was talking to her. “It’s the rain,” she explained. It had been raining heavily all morning with no signs of letting up. “I would be doing the same thing if I actually had somewhere to be today.”

Scott stared at her blankly.

“Rain makes people’s hair get all frizzy, you know?”

He didn’t. Scott self-consciously reached up for his own hair before catching himself and calling back down the hall, “Just… hurry up!”

Kitty took another sip of coffee as Scott took the stairs down to the main floor in a huff. She stepped across the hall to where Jean was wrangling her thick auburn locks into submission. This was exactly why Kitty rarely wore her hair down; ponytails were the fastest way to get out the door in the morning. The way Jean’s hair fell down in perfect waves past her shoulders was almost enough to make Kitty reconsider her hairstyle choices, though she was positive she would never be able to coax that kind of volume out of her own stubbornly thin hair.

“Did Scott really leave?” Jean asked. Some kind of conditioning spray telepathically rose up in the air to spritz her hair into submission while the flattener did the rest of the work.

“There’s no way he’s going to leave without you,” Kitty reassured her. Anyone could see Scott Summers only had eyes for Jean Grey. Kurt was lucky he’d just been granted some extra time to look for the misplaced geometry book. If Jean had gotten her hair in order, he would have been left in the dust five minutes ago.

“This is a weird question, but…” Kitty felt her face heat up, but she had to start with someone and Jean had taken the informal role of Big Sister at Mutant School. “No one else lives here, right? Like, it’s just the seven of us? You, me, Scott, Kurt, Ororo, Professor X and Mr. Logan?” She counted off her fingers as she went, explicitly making sure she hadn’t forgotten anyone.

“Of course, why?” Jean leaned forward over the bathroom sink to nudge a tiny mascara glob out of her eyelashes. “Ugh, it doesn’t matter what brand I use. I am cursed with clumpy mascara.”

Kitty, who didn’t have much advice about mascara, took a nervous sip of her now lukewarm coffee. “It’s just that…” She tried to figure out a way to not make herself sound ridiculous, but there was probably no good way to describe what she’d seen and _not_ sound ridiculous. “A few nights ago, okay, like, one of my first nights here, I couldn’t sleep and I got up to go to the bathroom and—”

“Uh-huh. That makes sense. It’s hard. Sleeping in a new place.” Jean was only half-listening. She twisted her mascara wand back into its sheath and threw it into her open make-up bag. Scott bellowed from downstairs again that he really meant it this time. He was Officially Leaving. “I’m coming, Scott!” Jean yelled back. “Kitty, is it all right if we talk about this later?”

“Uh, sure.”

“Maybe ask Kurt if he saw anyone,” she said with some hesitation, like she was hiding something. Now Kitty knew she was on the right track, but Jean was trying to push her off course and toward Kurt, who was practically as new an arrival as she was and knew about a fraction more, which wasn’t saying much. She wasn’t exactly crushing the Teenage Mutant Ninja X-Woman thing.

“Ok, I’ll do that,” Kitty said, trying to sound more confident about the suggestion than she really felt.

Aggressively staccato car honks made Jean roll her eyes but gave her an obvious escape route. “Two words, Kitty: anal retentive.”

Kitty watched as Jean disappeared and Kurt’s last teleportation cloud dissipated. Well, that was one possible information source up in smoke. She swigged the last too-sugary dregs of her coffee. But she was just getting started.

* 

Later that night after dinner, she and Kurt were hanging out on the couch, about to watch a movie. He’d assured her multiple times he didn’t have any pressing homework to do. Kitty was lonely and bored enough to choose to believe him. Plus, she hadn’t forgotten Jean’s earlier advice. Maybe Kurt _had_ noticed something. He was always teleporting around after all. Who knew what kinds of secrets he stumbled upon?

Jean and Scott had raised their eyebrows at each other in a meaningful way, like something salacious was happening right under their noses, when Kurt announced that he and Kitty were going to watch a movie. Kitty knew that Jean and Scott, and probably the adults, too, thought that maybe this was the start of something.

Kitty had had her suspicions at first, too. Lance had made her wary of cute, friendly boys who don’t immediately make clear that they want something from her. Because they always wanted something.

But Kurt wasn’t like that, for which she was deeply grateful. Okay, like, 98% grateful.

“Who do you think is in charge of buying movies for the X-Mansion? These are all terrible,” Kurt said as he shuffled through the small stack of VHS tapes on his lap. They’d found a collection of movies in the TV room and were trying to discern what, if anything, they were in the mood for. One in particular caught Kitty’s eye.

“You’re not actually saying Titanic is terrible, are you?”

“Never seen it,” he said with a shrug. At her shocked expression, he added, “It freaks me out.”

She laughed. “What’s freaky about it? It’s like, the most romantic movie of all time. Of all time!” she added with a small clap between each word for emphasis.

“Being on a sinking ship in the middle of the ocean and watching everyone drown is romantic?” He shuddered. “I’d hate to see what your idea of a good first date looks like.”

At the mention of first dates, she fought back a confusing blush. God, why was she blushing? “The trick to Titanic is that you’ve got to watch just the first tape and not the second,” she said with authority, hoping Kurt would be too nice to mention her sudden redness. “And then you stop watching and just imagine your own ending where they notice the iceberg in time, they make it to New York and everyone lives happily ever after.”

“Ah, nothing like a classic movie where you can only enjoy it if you don’t watch half of it.” He made a face and mimed chucking the VHS across the room. Kitty darted a hand out to grab his wrist and stop him. Kurt jerked back so fast, he practically did a backflip. They stared at each other for a moment, awkwardness seeping into the room. Kitty sensed she’d crossed a line, somehow.

Kurt jumped in before she could work out an apology - though what she would be apologizing for, she wasn’t sure. “I veto Titanic, but you pick whatever else you want,” he said rapidly, his accent sharpening ‘whatever else you want’ into ‘vatever else you vant.’ “I’ll go make popcorn while you decide. Be right back!” Kurt teleported out with a soft _bamf._

She pushed her face into the couch cushions, nearly phasing through them to escape her own mortification but pulling back before she tumbled through. Swimming through her own guilt, she started connecting some dots.

It was true that he’d occasionally say something that could be taken for flirting. Or maybe a super small part of her wanted to interpret things that way. And if she was being honest, she said her own share of maybe-maybe-not flirting. But the one or two times either of them got a little closer to the blurry spot where friends became romantic crushes, the other person always reenforced the boundary. Which was good. Responsible.

Though it wasn’t until now that she’d really noticed this one boundary in particular — he rarely if ever touched her. He was willing to sit semi-close on the couch like they had just been, one leg lightly touching hers, and he once nudged her with his elbow, but that was it.

Kitty didn’t want to read too much into her own deeply accurate and specific accounting of every time Kurt Wagner Made Physical Contact. Because they were friends. Just friends. Besides, if they were ever… not Just Friends anymore, she couldn’t imagine how annoying Jean and Scott would be if they were proven right. And then if she and Kurt broke up…

 _Get a hold of yourself, Pryde,_ she scolded herself, deeply relieved that neither of the mansion’s mind readers was there with her, witnessing her imagine a breakup for an imaginary relationship she neither had or was entirely sure she wanted or that was even more than the slightest of possibilities.

Kurt was being responsible with their friendship, and she should be, too. She was never good at friendships, so on the rare occasion when they came by, she was desperate to hold onto them. She’d been willing to drink a disgusting condiment slurry in a sad attempt to win friends in elementary school, been willing to turn the other way while Lance took advantage of her because she wanted to keep a connection with the only other mutant she knew at the time. And now that Kurt had become her friend without her even trying — a miraculous act in itself — she was acting desperate again because it was all she knew. Like her starved heart had memorized this pattern of not feeling like enough, of wanting more out of people, so then she just forced things and people pulled away. Rinse. Repeat.

She took a deep breath and leaned back. She wasn’t that person anymore. Being here was meant to be a completely new start.

“Just chill,” she murmured to herself. Kitty imagined her tumble of desperate feelings being tossed into a box and the box being put on a very high shelf. There were other things to think about. Her mansion mystery still waiting to be solved, for example. Between that and a movie, she could create enough distraction from her mistake that they could get on the right track again.

As Kitty resolved all this in her mind, another _bamf_ announced Kurt’s return.

“You went from Titanic to Jaws?” he asked, nodding toward the tape Kitty happened to be holding, his own hands full with a giant bowl of popcorn and two cans of soda. “Now you’re really testing my fear of deep water.”

“That’s what you’re most scared of?”

He set the snacks down on the coffee table and popped open a soda, using two fingers to yank the tab up instead of one. “Deep water. Caves. Anything where I can’t teleport myself out.”

“You couldn’t teleport out of a cave?”

“A small cave that’s still near to the surface, probably,” he allowed. “But beyond that… I would be teleporting blind. I could teleport myself into a wall if I don’t know where I’m going.”

Kitty hadn’t really thought about the possible dangers of their mutant powers, besides just being societal outcasts. She’d thought her own powers were disturbing because they weren’t normal and had come on so suddenly, but they did provide some comfort in their own way, too. She couldn’t think of a situation where they wouldn’t help or would be possibly fatal. But, she supposed, Kurt had had more time to consider these things.

“And the deep water,” he went on. “It’s more the ocean. I can’t teleport across huge distances, and I’ve never tested how far I could get, just teleporting a short distance, over and over and over. I’d probably get exhausted and drown.”

“This sure is a cheerful conversation,” she said wryly.

He grinned. “So, let’s watch your man-eating shark movie then, huh?”

Kurt bent down by the VCR, setting things up and pressing the right buttons. The moment to ask her question about the mansion mystery monster was passing her by.

“Before we start watching, I have a pretty weird question for you,” she said.

“Good thing I’m a fan of weird questions,” he said, flashing her what was clearly a forced smile. He seemed to be bracing himself for something. Maybe he was worried she’d bring up the way he’d reacted when she’d reached for him.

“Is this place like, haunted or something?” She could already hear how stupid she probably sounded. But Kurt wasn’t like Jean or Scott — he was her age, also semi-new to all this team mutant stuff. He’d told her he had always known how to teleport, but that he’d assumed he was the only one in the world with powers.

He cocked his head to the side. “Haunted? As in ghosts and all work and no play and twin girls standing in empty hallways?”

“So you _have_ seen some scary movies,” Kitty joked. “But no, not haunted like that.”

The movie had started playing, but he quickly paused it, just grungy seaweed floating in the ocean on the screen. The classic bass notes hadn’t even started to play yet. 

“I saw something the first night I was here,” she continued, “And I thought it was just, I don’t know, me being in an unfamiliar place. But the more I think about it, the more I’m sure it was real. Dreams usually fade in your mind, you know? But this one hasn’t.”

His face went very still. “What do you think you saw?”

“A… like a goblin or demon… or Something.” She could tell she was losing him. “I don’t know. I saw it on the ceiling in the hallway outside my room.” She shivered at the memory, but then Kurt laughed - a different kind of laugh, one Kitty hadn’t heard from him before. He was laughing _at_ her.

“A goblin demon on the ceiling? Kitty, come on.”

Her face instantly heated up, but this was different than the embarrassment she’d felt before. Now she felt kinda mad and like she was going to cry, which made her more mad. She hadn’t expected to be immediately shut down and made to feel supremely stupid, not by Kurt.

“Fine, let’s just watch the movie then.” She folded her arms across her chest and sat back into the couch.

Kurt winced and came to kneel near her. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have laughed,” he said quietly. “It just… It’s an old mansion and this is a strange place to be before you get used to it, ja? And I don’t want you to be afraid of shadows.”

She wiped away at a couple tears that were threatening to fall. God, this was embarrassing. “Just forget I said anything, okay?”

But he didn’t move away to start the movie up again. Instead, he tentatively placed a hand on her knee but she knew better now than to reach for it. Still, the soft weight of his hand was nice. “I’m sorry for laughing. Really. You just surprised me with that question.” He searched for some words of comfort - of how to tell her she was seeing things while still being nice about it. “It’s not uncommon for strange things to happen around here. All of our special gifts, you know." He made quotation marks with his fingers around the word 'gifts.' "And Logan always coming and going like a feral cat - maybe he’s what you saw?”

“Why would Mr. Logan be crawling on the ceiling?”

“Er…”

“You really don’t believe me.”

He bit his lip, and said carefully, “I believe that you believe that you saw something. But, Kitty, have you seen it since?”

“No,” she confessed. 

This seemed to relieve him. “Ok, and I’ve been here for a couple months now, and I’ve never seen anything like what you describe. And Scott and Jean and everyone else—”

“They haven’t seen anything either,” Kitty finished for him. She pushed the tips of her fingers into her forehead and listened to Kurt start up the movie again, the matter clearly settled in his mind.

“Shadows,” Kitty murmured to herself. Was she really, actually crazy and just seeing things because she was a scared girl away from home for the first time? Everyone else seemed to think so. Even Kurt.

He settled in next to her on the couch, but maintained enough distance that when the jumpy parts in the movie occurred, they weren’t close enough to accidentally grab onto each other in fright.

But later that night, she saw it again after another midnight bathroom excursion. Just a brief movement out of the corner of her eye, a pervading sense of being watched, in the same part of the hallway as before. This time, though, she ran to catch up with it, but it disappeared, though not before lightly bumping into a painting of a harbor that was hanging on the wall. Kitty turned the hallway lights on, unnerved to see the painting really was askew. Hands shaking, she straightened it again before going back to bed.

She thought back to what Kurt had said, about not being afraid of shadows. But this was no shadow and she was going to prove it to him, to everyone.

* 

Kitty had investigated the hallway where she’d seen the goblin creature before, but only during the day, which really hadn’t turned up much besides Ororo asking her if she was feeling all right. (She’d been on her hands and knees, picking through carpet fibers, so the question was warranted.)

After she’d assured Ororo that she hadn’t lost her mind and that in fact she was just looking for an earring and no, she didn’t need any help in the rescue mission but thank you, that Kitty found what she’d actually been hunting for. Blue hairs.

Ororo had already went on her way by then, so no one was there to witness her triumph. She’d held them in the palm of her hand, peering closely at them. The doubting realist side of her thought that maybe they were Kurt’s, but his hair was more just dark - these were 100% bright blue and short, shorter than his overgrown slacker dude hairstyle.

She’d carefully put them between the pages of her book, feeling even more vindicated that she was on the right path. Later, she’d done her due diligence in asking Jean again about the monster, and Jean, again, had wiggled out of the conversation.

Directly asking Scott ‘oh hey is there a blue ceiling goblin haunting the mansion?’ was just too embarrassing and her attempt at casually asking if there was anyone else at the mansion she hadn’t met yet just left him confused.

Even if she did have four blue hairs that she could present to Kurt as Exhibit A that she wasn’t making any of this up, she didn’t want to run up to him, waving a few hairs she found in a hallway carpet. It had been forever since she’d met someone who actually thought she was fun and interesting, not the weird, awkward nerd girl who got straight A’s. She didn’t want to lose him now.

Since she'd run out of questioning possible information sources, she had to go with Plan B: Stakeout.

It was all very exciting. Through dinner later that night, as Kurt, Scott, and Jean recounted their day to a bored Mr. Logan and a politely interested Ororo and Professor Xavier, Kitty had a secret that was all her own. When Jean nicely asked what Kitty had gotten up to after another day of not being in school (damn you Bayview and your slowness to accept out-of-state transcripts), Kitty actually got a thrill out of saying “not much,” when usually she would have felt like a total loser.

But now Kitty was sitting in her ridiculously huge room, ignoring her comfy bed, and forcing herself to continually take sips of coffee, flashlight nearby and at the ready. She kept refreshing LiveJournal, waiting for the next piece of celebrity gossip that would keep her slightly entertained for another 10 minutes.

Kitty sometimes felt like these days of brazen, unselfconscious internet-ing were precious. She’d been warned multiple times that eventually she’d share her room with another X-Lady, but so far, Professor Xavier hadn’t had any luck finding her. She twisted around in her desk chair to look at the other bed. Would it count as resting her eyes if it was in a bed she didn’t normally use? It was more like a couch, really…

“No, stop,” she ordered herself. “You are awake. You are so awake, you’re like, ready to take the practice ACT again. You’re ready to crush it!” God, what was she even saying?

She took another glug of room temperature coffee just to remind herself of just How Awake she was, begging the caffeine to block more adenosine receptors in her brain. Her parents always joked that they never had to worry about Kitty breaking curfew, because she could barely stay up past 9:30 p.m. This time, though, she had to prove them wrong, even if it meant it felt like a family of cicadas were living between her ears. She shakily put the mug down and glanced over at her bedside table alarm clock. The bright green numbers glowed 2:30 a.m. This was officially the latest she’d ever stayed up.

She practiced phasing her hand through her coffee mug, back and forth. She hadn’t yet begun her X-Men training and wasn’t in any rush to start after hearing the others talk about the Danger Room. Just the name alone seemed like enough of a warning.

But now that she was staying up all night to catch and confront a blue ceiling goblin, she kind of wished that she’d told Professor Xavier that she wanted to get a jump on her training. She’d never even taken a self-defense class before.

Just when Kitty was truly considering shutting down her computer, she heard a toilet flush from across the hall. It was probably just one of the others, but still. She had to be diligent. She didn't want to have replaced her entire blood supply with coffee to have been for nothing.

She threw a hoodie over her computer screen to dim the light and tried to quietly yet speedily creep to the hallway, flashlight in hand.

Her eyes struggled to adjust to the darkness after staring at a glowing computer screen for so long, but there, ahead, she could see a hunched figure slouching off. A forked tail swishing behind it.

She had it now. The thing. The whatever it was.

Fingers trembling, she slid her thumb to the 'on' switch of the flashlight.

The sudden presence of yellow light made the creature swivel around. In a too-long, horrifying moment, details came into view: blue face, bright yellow eyes, feet that looked misshapen and worn T-shirt and sweatpants.

They locked eyes — yellow meeting blue — and screamed.

Immediately, light appeared beneath Scott’s bedroom door, then Jean’s. The creature’s luminescent eyes went wide in panic, and it spun to lope off on all fours down the hall.

“Wait!” Kitty yelled. “Come back here!” It was only as it disappeared around the corner that Kitty’s brain caught up with her eyeballs.

What kind of monster wore sweatpants…?

Whatever. Not important. Because the closest door was Kurt’s and that thing was in there with him. He could probably handle himself if he was awake, at least teleport to get away, but asleep? 

She tried the door, but it was locked. Crap. She hammered a fist against the door. “Kurt, wake up! There’s something in there!”

Through the door, she could hear panicked movements and dresser drawers slamming open and shut. Glass breaking. Was the monster already attacking him?

Frustrated, she pulled on the locked doorknob again before realizing what should have been the obvious action to take from the start.

“Friggin’ duh,” she groaned, and phased right through the bedroom door as though brushing a curtain aside. “Leave him alone, you—” She pulled up short.

There was only one other person/thing/creature/friend in the room besides Kitty. He stared back at her, mouth agape, revealing two sharp fangs. His forked tail whipping behind him, the only movement between the two of them. Distantly, she noticed that the rest of the room looked like it had been turned upside down. Dresser drawers were left open, a broken table lamp on the floor.

Despite seeing her nightmare creature in the light, she somehow knew, instantly. The way he held himself, his slight slouch, the way his eyebrows rose up, the shaggy hairstyle.

“…You?”

“Kitty, I can explain, I—” The thing that was once her friend Kurt Wagner struggled to form sentences.

She shook her head. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. The boy she knew was gone - had never been. “What— what are you?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.

He flinched like she’d slapped him, but recovered enough to take a step or two toward her, malformed hands reaching out, bright yellow eyes pleading with hers. But she just couldn’t. She _couldn’t._ It was too much at once.

“Don’t touch me!”

“Kitty, please—” Kurt tried to close the distance between them.

“I said don’t touch me!” she screamed. Kurt’s bedroom door slammed open behind him, Mr. Logan with claws out, filling the doorframe.

She used the distraction to phase herself right through the floor, and on the way down just managed to catch Mr. Logan taking in the scene with a low growl of, “Ah, shit.”


	3. Chapter 3

It was Jean who was sent to find her. Again. Kitty couldn’t help thinking of when this had last happened, how freaked out and overwhelmed she’d felt then and how this was not _quite_ as bad as having brand-new, out-of-control phasing powers but still. It was up there.

The first thing Kitty said when Jean cautiously walked into the kitchen was: “You all knew, I’m guessing?”

Jean’s guilty expression confirmed it. What else were they keeping from her? When she left the room, did they all share Knowing Looks like — Wow, this girl is an idiot. When she asked Jean if anything or anyone else lived in the mansion, did Jean think it was hilarious? Did she laugh about it with Scott? What was it about Kitty that made her seem especially gullible to other people?

Jean quickly launched into an explanation. “You’re the first person we recruited after Kurt and we weren’t sure what he would do when he met you. I think he was just scared, Kitty. And the image inducer from the professor was too tempting not to use.”

An image inducer? That must be whatever technology he’d been using to not be… blue with a forked tail. A hologram or something. Between unintentionally confronting Kurt Wagner the X-Mansion’s resident blue goblin and phasing through the floor into the kitchen, Kitty hadn’t really had time to consider the how of the lie yet. From everything she’d seen so far of the mutant world, she would have guessed transformation powers or something before fancy tech. The nerd part of her wondered how it all worked.

While she was chewing over these specifics, Jean continued, “Scott and I both tried telling him to just be himself, but.” She shrugged apologetically. “We didn’t think it was our place to push it.”

It made a painful sort of sense. And Jean was being so freaking reasonable about everything, which made Kitty, somehow, even more mad and she could feel a lump growing in her throat. She always cried when she was mad, so she pushed everything back down to avoid the additional layer of humiliation.

“The professor thinks you and Kurt should have a fresh start, the sooner the better.” Jean trailed off and briefly stared off into the middle distance, which Kitty had swiftly learned since coming to live at the Institute meant a telepathic conversation was happening. “He and Kurt are waiting for you in his office.”

Kitty warily glanced at the glowing green digits on the microwave. It was 3:15 a.m. and for a long moment all she could feel was a deep exhaustion. But she knew if she didn’t go deal with this now, as soon as she crawled into bed it would be all her brain could think about and she wouldn’t be able to sleep no matter how tired she was.

“Lead the way, I guess,” she said with a sigh.

Outside the professor’s office, Jean briefly put a sisterly hand on Kitty’s shoulder in a way that was probably meant to be comforting but in the moment was just kinda patronizing. “It’ll be fine,” she whispered. Kitty smiled tiredly and gave her a weak thumbs up that she hoped wasn’t too sarcastic.

Having delivered Kitty as requested, Jean let out a yawn (which made Kitty reflexively yawn too) and with a “good-night,” trudged off back to her room and her bed. Lucky. What Kitty would have traded to just be able to go back to her own. But no. She’d had to go play detective. Though of course, if she hadn’t, she’d still be looking like an idiot every day, not knowing there was a giant secret right in front of her who she liked talking to and watching movies with and… Ugh.

He’d tricked her. Just like Lance had. Like that mean girl Kayla when they were kids. All of them making her believe that they were good friends when actually they just wanted to use her for something, from answers to a test to friggin’ elementary school clout. Those things that were somehow worth more than Kitty herself.

And Kurt had wanted… well, a little idiot like her to be receptive to his jokes and to his charm. Someone who might open up, be vulnerable, without him having to give anything of himself in return. God, and she had been flirting with him a tiny bit, hadn’t she? He must have loved that.

There was that lump in her throat again. She wanted to cry and she also wanted to punch something.

Kitty distracted herself by quickly redoing and smoothing down her ponytail.

“Better get this over with,” she murmured and gingerly opened the door.

“Ah, Kitty. Good. Please, come sit down.” Professor Xavier gestured at the love seat in the center of the room. He looked impressively alert for it being three in the morning. A fire had been lit in the nearby fireplace instead of overhead lights being thrown on, which was both a relief to her tired eyeballs but also made the room a bit more ominous than necessary.

The first and last time she’d been in this office, she’d been surprised that the professor’s desk was tucked further back in the room, and instead, the space was almost laid out like a living room, with couches, a coffee table, a fireplace and bookcases. There was even an espresso machine with stacks of delicately patterned coffee cups stacked neatly next to it. The room seemed more suited for a fancy high school counselor, which, she supposed, was probably what the professor was going for.

Kitty cautiously sat down on the couch. It took a moment for her eyes to find him. The firelight cast heavy shadows, which is where Kurt had chosen to lurk on the other side of the room, as far away from her as he could possibly be.

“Kurt,” Professor Xavier gently prompted. Kurt quietly slipped into the light, sitting on the loveseat opposite to Kitty, looking like he wanted to be anywhere else in the world, which she could relate to. He kept his gaze down at his hands clasped in his lap, so Kitty took the opportunity to not-so-subtly stare.

Now that they weren’t unexpectedly meeting in a dark hallway in the middle of the night, it was easier to just focus on one thing at a time to make a whole picture that was, well, bizarre if she was being honest but not all that horrifying.

There was that intense fuzzy blueness she had come to recognize, though blue seemed like too basic a word now that she was getting a proper look. It was more like a velvety navy color. A shade with depth and movement.

The forked tail was a lot to contend with, but what did she know about the realities of mutant world? Maybe 50% of mutants had forked tails and Kurt was the first one she’d happened to meet.

His feet were bare and their sharp, elongated angles strongly reminded her of a cat’s. And then there were the pointed ears, which she hadn’t noticed in their earlier run-ins, poking out from the familiar shaggy hairstyle.

Maybe it was the dull buzzing of caffeine in her system or the adrenaline and subsequent crash of the evening’s excitement, but looking at Kurt made her feel like her brain was shorting out. Like, she knew what she was literally seeing with her eyes but she also couldn’t quite believe it.

Telepathy? Eyeball blasts? Hand blades? Fine. Mostly-ish. But this was next level.

Why the hell hadn’t anyone told her? Joining the X-Men was meant to be an end to the reality-shattering surprises. It wasn’t like she could just look this stuff up on the internet. She just wanted someone to freaking sit her down and explain all this crap so she could stop being so blindsided by it all. Even in the freaky mutant club, she was still getting abandoned. 

_Damn it._

She wiped at her eyes, but tried to make it look like she was just tired. At her movement, Kurt slowly looked up and they stared at each other for a long moment. From where Kitty sat, he looked more like the one who’d been truly frightened, not her.

“It seems there’s been a misunderstanding between the two of you,” the professor began. “Instead of prolonging the confusion, I thought it best to reconcile as soon as possible, though I apologize for asking this of you two at such an early hour.” He shifted his attention to Kurt. “From my understanding, Kurt, you’ve been wearing your image inducer full-time. You know its battery life can’t sustain that.” Kitty noticed that he didn’t ask Kurt why he’d gone out of his way to fool her. She supposed the reasoning was obvious, so maybe it was rude to directly point it out.

Kurt squirmed uncomfortably, not wanting to look in either of their directions. “Looking like this and meeting someone new can be... difficult, ja? I just wanted to see what would happen if things were different.” His eyes, surprisingly accusatory, finally found Kitty’s. “And you were freaked out when you actually saw me. You thought I was a monster. You screamed, you—”

Her face heated up. “You didn’t give me a chance not to!”

“You would have no matter what!”

“You don’t _know_ that,” Kitty argued.

“Yes, I do,” he replied grimly. “Everyone always does. Why would you be the exception?”

The professor interjected before Kitty could give a rebuttal. “The fact of the matter is that Kitty was indeed, er, surprised by your true appearance, Kurt.” He seemed to briefly consider his next words. “I’m in the process of recruiting a new member of the X-Men.” That was enough to distract them from their argument. It was the first time Kitty was hearing about this, though she supposed she couldn’t be the new girl forever. 

Professor Xavier continued, “And while it’s ultimately your decision, once we contact them and if this person does agree to join us, please consider forgoing the subterfuge, Kurt. For the sake of the team, we should be honest with each other. Even when it’s hard.” 

Kurt nodded glumly.

“And Kitty, next time, please feel free to come to me if you have questions about the X-Men or the Xavier Institute. I understand why you talked to your peers first, but, as you understand, they were put in a difficult position.”

“I will, Professor.”

He folded his hands together. “And I hope you will put this whole incident behind you and accept Kurt as he is.”

Irritation bubbled through her exhaustion, but she nodded in agreement anyway. She was mostly grateful this was over and Kurt’s secret was out, and she could go back to focusing on starting at Bayville soon. And she was pretty sure she could just add blue fur and forked tails to the never-ending list of Weird Mutant Stuff. It would take some getting used to, but if she could handle literal mind-reading, she could handle someone having some… unexpected appendages.

But. The idea of putting all of this behind her, that was just… so… unfair? Like she could be instantly chill about being lied to by everyone she lived with. Like it was so easy to go back to trusting people were telling her the truth. Like she could forget the one person she thought she was really starting to bond with had lied to her, over and over again, and would have, apparently, preferred that she had never known the truth.

“I hope this settles the matter,” Professor Xavier went on. His expression was suddenly strained, like he was holding back a yawn. Kurt and Kitty both yawned in unison. His sharp fangs flashed in the firelight and she couldn’t help herself. She shivered slightly. If the other two noticed, they didn’t say anything.

“You can both go back to bed now,” the professor finally said.

Kitty understood they were being dismissed. Of course, they had to leave the office together in painfully awkward silence. She was still pretty mad about the whole thing, but beneath that immediate emotion, there was a little heartache. The way Kurt slouched beside her, staring down at the floor, was so different than the bubbly, grinning, always-ready-with-a-joke guy who she’d been getting to know.

And, if she was being honest with herself, she could see his side of things. Sorta. Perpetually lying to someone you were allegedly friends with wasn’t a good look, but he’d obviously had a reason for it. And there’d been real hurt in his face just now, when he’d accused her of being freaked out by him. That had come from somewhere.

Maybe they could still save this friendship. Maybe it was worth saving.

She just had to break the silence first.

“Hey, so—” she began, turning toward him, but she just ended up coughing on smoke as he teleported away.

* 

Kitty had never been more grateful for Bayville’s slow admin, because it meant she got to sleep in on a school day and coincidentally avoid everyone at breakfast. It also gave her time to decide what she wanted to say to Kurt when he and the others came home from school.

Her stomach did backflips all day, while in her head, she revised and revised her feelings into words. Nothing sounded exactly right.

She just… she wanted him to understand that she was freaking mad at him for lying and for getting everyone else to lie for him and making her feel like some dumb, gullible kid who couldn’t handle the truth. The blue fur, the fangs, the friggin’ _tail,_ she could adjust to all that, she was pretty sure, even if it took her a little while. But Kitty couldn’t just wipe away the lying part. It was like being asked to ignore a bullet wound.

But also she’d kinda gotten the sense that like, maybe Kurt was also mad at her? The way he’d just teleported away mid-sentence after they’d talked to the professor… he’d certainly seemed mad, which made her extra mad. Why the hell did he think he was allowed to be mad in this situation that was entirely of his own creation, huh?

_Ugh, no. Don’t say it like that. He’ll hate you even more._

Because that was, really, the last thing she wanted. She sorta hated herself for it, but despite everything, she still clung to the memories of when she’d first shown up at the Institute, when Kurt had promised she’d be starting at Bayville with a friend.

From jump, it had felt so easy between them. She’d never experienced that before, and definitely not with a guy. Even with Lance, there had been a little warning bell deep in her gut (that she had stupidly ignored). But with Kurt? She hadn’t known to be wary. The warning bell had been totally silent. Maybe that’s why this hurt so much more. She’d been blindsided.

From her bedroom window, she watched as Scott’s ridiculously cool car glided up the drive and knew her time for figuring out what she was going to say to Kurt was up. She didn’t think she had the perfect combo of words that would communicate a rational explanation of complicated feelings but if she stood at the window any longer, she was really going to start feeling like a shut-in Edwardian lady from a Brontë novel.

She picked at a hangnail and it started bleeding. By the time she’d gotten a Band-Aid on it, it had been roughly 10 minutes since the others had come home, which seemed a reasonable amount to have put off making an appearance. (She hadn’t wanted to seem like she’d just been super clingy and waiting for everyone to get home. Even thought she totally had.)

Her left pointer finger still stinging, she braced herself and stepped out into the hallway where she immediately got a nose full of sulfur.

“Kitty!”

“Aghhh!”

Kitty full-body flinched. Kurt winced. This was already going so well. 

She’d been pretty sure she was ready to face Kurt for the first time since the previous night’s revelations, but not like, _that_ ready.

“I was coming to find you,” he said by way of explanation, like he hadn’t just practically teleported on top of her. “We’re going to Gut Bomb, and I—I mean, _we_ —wanted to know if you wanted to come with? Scott and Jean are waiting downstairs.”

As promised to the professor, Kurt was his full-on fuzzy blue self, which was a lot to take in all at once with no warning. Her heart was thundering in her chest, attempting to recover from the double-whammy shock of unexpected teleportation and Blue Guy.

“Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” she complained, because he was still waiting for her to say something.

“Not at all! I think they have a veggie mushroom lettuce… thing,” Kurt said. “You could have one of those. Very heart healthy. Good for your arteries.”

It took her a second to figure out what he meant. He grinned at her, fangs and all, and grinned even wider when he saw she realized he was joking. It wasn’t a great joke or even a slightly good joke, but he was clearly trying, reaching for their old equilibrium.

But that wasn’t how Kitty rolled. She couldn’t just sweep things under the rug and pretend the lumps weren’t there.

“Actually,” she began, her face already heating up. “I wanted to talk to you. About last night.”

He raised an eyebrow at her, and for a moment, she could see the Kurt she’d known before, just with, y’know, more blue. “It’s ok, Kitty. Really. A bump in the road. That’s all.” 

Ok, this was not what she’d been expecting. Like, at all. “Right,” she said slowly. “It’s just that, well, last night was such a surprise? And it’s all just a lot to take in, you know?” Ugh, she was doing that thing where every sentence was getting turned into a question and dancing around what she was actually trying to say.

Kurt looked like he was struggling to figure out a response to her vague question-statements. A car horn distantly beeped in impatience. Scott and Jean were waiting for them. “I know I’m a lot to take in, Kitty,” he said slowly, like he was very consciously stringing each word together.

Crap. She didn’t want to make this about _that._ His blue fuzziness felt like something that was on her to deal with, though he wasn’t making it any easier by randomly teleporting into her personal space. No, what she was really concerned with was the lying part, the getting everyone else to lie to her part, the making her look stupid in front of everyone she lived with part… She couldn't move on if they never talked about it again.

“I don’t want you to be afraid of me,” Kurt added. Even his tail was drooping.

“I’m not,” she said, though it felt a little bit like a white lie in her mouth.

“You are,” he said gently. “Or, you were.” He didn’t wait for her to agree or disagree further. Instead, it was like a light had flipped back on in his eyes and he was smiling again. “So, let’s just forget about all that, ja? It’s in the past.” He made a motion like he was tossing something over his shoulder. There was more distant car honking. “Shall we?” He offered her the crook of his elbow to take, like he was escorting her down a red carpet or something. It felt like a test. 

She instinctually shied away. She’d never teleported before. It made her nervous. For the briefest of brief moments, hurt flashed across his face but then the smile was back. 

“Sorry,” she heard herself saying. “I need to get ready for tomorrow. My big Bayville High debut, you know?”

He shrugged. No big deal. “If you’re sure! I’ll see you tomorrow! I bet it’ll be smooth sailing! Can’t wait to show you the wonders and horrors of Bayville High School!” He flashed two thumbs-up before disappearing in a puff of smoke. 

Why had it sounded like he’d staple-gunned an exclamation point after each sentence? Like by sheer force of charm he could make everything a-ok. Presumably this was what usually worked for him. She supposed if she had a tail and fangs, she’d probably try to be as Disarming & Friendly as possible, too.

But she’d only wanted to explain and talk things out. It didn’t have to be a big dramatic thing. She could apologize for reacting to his looks the way she had, both last night and… also kinda just now when he’d suddenly teleported in front of her. And she could explain herself properly.

He would get a chance to apologize, too, for the lying. That was all Kitty wanted. So far, it was like he’d taken complete control over the narrative and was sculpting this version of her that she didn’t recognize. Someone ignorant and mean whose ignorance Kurt would patiently overcome, because that's just what he did. 

She supposed it all made perfect sense to the others. _No wonder she had no friends at her old school,_ they’d think. _She’s petty and full of herself and treats saintly Kurt Wagner, who only wanted to be her friend, like a grotesque monster._

Kitty walked back into her room, flopped down on her bed, and screamed into her pillow. 

* 

Weeks passed, and Kitty still couldn’t put it all behind her. Not even with (finally!) the sweet distraction of school, tests and a GPA to constantly worry about. She was pretty sure she was heading in the direction of being a possible contender for valedictorian at her old school, and she was determined to not let a little thing like developing mutant powers and moving across the country stop her.

She had three classes with Kurt, plus lunch and gym class. She was used to it now, but the first time they’d crossed paths at school, him looking like the Kurt she used to know, she immediately stepped right into an open locker door.

“You can’t let every handsome guy you see distract you like that,” he’d lectured before running a hand through his hair with a wink.

“Ha ha, you’re hilarious,” she muttered. The freshman kid who’s locker door it had been had very loudly told her to watch where she was going in front of a passing herd of seniors. Extra humiliating.

 _How is it that even with freaking phasing powers, I’m still colliding with solid objects?_ she’d thought with a sigh.

Kurt had made it up to her later that day by helping her navigate the cafeteria for the first time, pointing out which cliques tended to sit where, which vending machine was least likely to hold your Little Debbie Snack hostage, and by what time it was feasible to still snag a picnic table outside.

“And if you’re going to get the pizza,” he continued, “Never eat it with that gross white sauce — you’ll probably be offered, but just don’t do it. You’ll thank me later.” 

She giggled. “You mean ranch dressing? That’s very Midwestern of them. People ate pizza like that at my old school all the time.”

Kurt looked up pleadingly at the ceiling and said, as if asking God himself, “What is wrong with Americans?”

He led them over to a nearby table where Scott was already sitting, looking more brooding than usual. She followed his sightline to the table where Jean was sitting, surrounded by popular upperclassmen, some of whom were obviously jocks. Kitty was quickly learning that the social order at the Institute got remixed at Bayville High. 

Scott hung out with the upperclassmen who didn’t seem like they fit into any particular group. Kurt was a foreign exchange student, so he could kinda do whatever he wanted. The rules didn’t apply to him.

Kitty wondered where she would end up falling, if she would even be able to find her own group of leftovers, like Scott had. Or if she would be alone again.

She was chasing a cherry tomato across her plate with a fork, while she mulled all this over. Kurt snatched the tomato up and popped it into his mouth.

“Hey!” She swatted at his shoulder.

“I had to put that tomato out of its misery.” He grinned and winked at her. “Ok, give me the full Kitty Pryde review of the First Day.”

“It’s only fourth period.”

He waved this point away. “You’ve been prepping for that class for weeks. I expect something exciting had to have happened. Did they ask you to recite _Pride & Prejudice_ backwards? Conjugate verbs into past perfect progressive while standing on your head?” 

She rolled her eyes, but grinned back at him. It was like their easy rhythm had never left.

“Ok, who’s the grammar nerd now?”

He smiled around his slice of pizza (sans ranch dressing). “I may not be in fancy person English classes, but I had to actually sit down and learn that stuff.”

“So when do I get to see you do a handstand and conjugate verbs?”

He waggled two fingers at her, which she now knew were actually just one beneath the image inducer’s illusion. “Time and place, Kitty. I don’t want to show you up on your first day.”

Scott looked annoyed, but didn’t say anything. With the three of them, there was some slight third wheel energy going on — and for once, it wasn’t coming from Kitty.

Bayville High _was_ different from the Institute. It was like nothing had happened between her and Kurt. They were (mostly) two normal kids. No one had super powers. No one was hiding a ridiculously huge secret from the other person. 

But as soon as they all went home, it was back to painful awkwardness. Too much in-your-face teleporting. Air that was too heavy, sentences that trailed off… She was figuring things out, though. First there’d been getting used to being able to phase through the floor. And then moving away from her parents and the only home she’d known. And then a brand-new high school. And now, she was getting used to being an X-Man.

Kitty had been dreading being thrown into the Danger Room for the first time. She hadn’t known she should have really been dreading their first mission.

“Why are all of us going again?” she asked Jean while they stood waiting for the others in the hangar. She still thought the spandex suits were a little silly, but at least the collar and boots were cute. “Only you and the professor came to recruit me.”

“I’m not sure. The professor must have thought he’d need all hands on deck, just in case.”

“No offense, but like, that does not seem like a good sign to me.”

Jean sighed. “Me neither.”

* 

Kitty’s first mission as an official X-Man turned out to be a complete failure. Kurt had gotten hurt, and the girl they’d been trying to reach — Rogue — had been totally out of control and run off. So, basically, a disaster.

Normally, Kitty’s main concern would have been the fact that it was a school night (and, yes, ok, some concern for Rogue, who seemed just as mixed up as Kitty had been when she’d first discovered that she could pass through solid objects — if not more so), but Kurt…

When he’d collapsed after Rogue did whatever-it-was to him, it was like all the other stuff between them had gone up in teleportation smoke. He was her _friend._ Her pointy-eared, furry blue, annoyingly charming friend. And he was really hurt and she couldn’t do anything useful other than wait for help to arrive. 

While she sat there, she held his limp hand in hers, the first time she’d really touched him since the truth had come out. She kept thinking about how they were both the two X-newbies, how they both. It was easier now, with him still and not teleporting into and out of her personal space at any given second, to take in everything different about him. 

Kitty could easily imagine a different first impression, if he’d just found her in the library as himself. She would have still been surprised, of course, it would have still been something to get over, but she would have had a second or two to deal. It wouldn’t have been a scare in the middle of the night or an illusion maintained by lies.

“I’m still really mad at you,” she said to him, even though she knew he was out cold. This was the first time Kitty had actually gotten some proper breathing room to talk about this crap, though. She tried not think about how the only moment she felt she had to talk about this with him was after he’d probably gotten his brains scrambled by a goth girl. 

“I’m mad at you for lying,” she clarified. “But like, I don’t want you to think that I think that…” What was she even saying? _Ugh. Just spit it out, Pryde._

“What I mean is,” she continued, “the other stuff is… different, for sure, and I need some time to make it make sense in my brain, but. It’s not a deal breaker for me, you know?”

He didn’t know. He didn’t respond at all. Because he was unconscious. Duh.

She put her other hand on his chest to reassure herself he wasn’t dead. There was a slow but solidly present heartbeat beneath her palm. _Stay alive, stay alive, help is coming._

Kurt stirred slightly, but he still didn’t open his eyes. Maybe her babbling at him was helping, at least a little. 

“I’m still not big on facial hair, but the pointy ears are starting to work for me,” she joked.

They stayed like that, Kitty kneeling next to Kurt, holding his hand and making stupid jokes, until the others arrived. Mr. Logan scooped him up like he weighed nothing.

The rest of the mission only continued downhill from there, and the flight back to the mansion was quiet and subdued. Kitty got the sense that Jean and Scott were a little embarrassed, like they’d presented the X-Men as being a lot more together and with it than the team actually was. Though to be fair, she and Kurt hadn’t known what they were doing, either. _And I messed up by tackling that girl,_ she reflected. _God, I’m embarrassing._

She pushed this new humiliation to the side; she’d torture herself over it in the weeks to come. Instead, the worry section of her brain was completely taken up by Kurt. 

Without talking about, they had sat together in the back. He was still kinda out of it, and ended up resting his head on her shoulder. She only stiffened for a second, but she didn’t think he noticed. And once they’d settled in, the weight of him was, well, nice. Warm.

Kitty’s cheeks warmed when she saw Jean looking at them, and she immediately turned away to look out the window (even though she couldn’t see anything). 

Back at the mansion, Kurt was, and she collapsed into her own bed. She really hoped there wouldn’t be more late-night missions like this. She had chemistry first thing in the morning, and she really didn’t want to end up sleeping through it.

Her last thought before she fell asleep was gratitude that the only lasting damage from the night was that the potential new recruit had attacked and escaped them. It hit her that it could have been so much worse. 

This whole time, it had felt like she'd lost Kurt as a friend. But she could have _actually_ lost him back there. It was, truly, a terrifying thought.

Over the next two days, Kurt was unusually quiet, mostly staying in his room in the dark thanks to a blowback migraine from Rogue. Kitty brought him his homework from the classes they shared and left them on his nightstand for him while he croaked out a “danke.” According to Scott, Kurt was starting to feel like himself again, but it might be another day before he was back to 100%. That goth girl’s powers were no joke.

So, she was surprised when she bumped into him on her way to the bathroom in the middle of the night. 

“Gyah!”

“Please don’t scream.” He gently grabbed her arm in the dark, a reassuring squeeze. “It’s just me.”

“Kurt, you scared me,” she let out in a big exhale. She put a hand over her heart, willing it to calm down. 

“I know,” he said. She didn’t miss the soft, sad note in his voice.

It was hard not to immediately think about the last time they’d encountered each other like this in the dark. 

“I didn’t mean you scared me like _that,_ ” she said. 

“Oh. Well. That’s good.” He paused, then, “Gute Nacht, Kitty.”

This seemed like her best, possibly only chance to set things right, to finally explain herself. She could hear him start to move, and she groped for him in the dark, grabbing him by the elbow. “Hey, actually, can we talk?”

“Kitty Pryde wants to have a conversation at 11 p.m. on a school night?” he joked. His golden eyes widened in exaggerated shock and horror. She wondered if he was adding to the effect by clasping his chest, but other than his eyes, he was only a voice in the dark.

She led him to her room, and was relieved when he asked her not to turn on the lights, so he wouldn’t have to see her dirty clothes in the corner. She was pretty sure she’d tossed the bra she’d been wearing on top of the pile before crawling into bed.

“My head’s feeling a lot better,” he said, “But I’d rather not put my eyeballs to the test just yet.”

She led him over to the empty bed, the one that she supposed Rogue was meant to have had if the X-Men had made a more convincing argument. Weird to think that she might have ended up sharing a room with the girl who tried to melt Kurt’s brain.

They awkwardly sat down on the bedspread cross-legged facing each other, her right knee lightly touched his left. They were both still, but there was a quiet, swishing movement nearby. 

His tail. Right.

Now that she had him here, she wasn’t sure where to start exactly. _This was easier when he was unconscious,_ she thought guilty. At least they were cloaked in the mostly anonymous safety of darkness. They could just be disembodied voices, touching knees, a pair of yellow eyes.

He broke the silence first. “So. You wanted to talk? Or was this all a secret plan to get me into your room?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. In your dreams, Kurt.”

“Kitty… how did you know?”

“Oh my god, shut up,” she said, but she couldn’t stop herself from smiling. His eyes crinkled up and he laughed softly before wincing “ouch.”

Kitty put a hand out, resting it on his other knee. “You ok?”

“Ja. Just some leftovers from our delightful conversation with our new, purple eye-shadowed friend.”

“I was really scared that night, you know. Like, I thought you were dead.”

“Sorry I freaked you out.”

“It’s not your fault. It’s that girl’s,” Kitty said with a little more venom than she meant to.

“She didn’t mean it. I can be a startling sight. As you know.”

Well, that was a little pointed, but at least he’d brought it up first. “Kurt, I’m not scared of you,” she said. “I’m _angry_ with you.”

That threw him off. “Angry?”

“Yes, angry!”

Her voice was slightly raised and he quickly shushed her, which, fair enough. Neither of them wanted to wake up the others. Kitty wasn’t sure how she’d explain having Kurt Wagner in her bedroom.

In a whisper, he asked, “What are you so angry about?”

“That you lied.”

“…When did I lie?”

Ugh. He really didn’t get it. She’d thought it would be obvious as soon as she’d said it to him. Her practice version of this conversation, back when it had been one-sided thanks to Rogue's mind-sucking powers, hadn’t required any additional explanation. 

“You lied to me,” she reiterated. “Over and over. When I told you I’d seen… a demon or goblin or something on the ceiling, you laughed at me. When you _knew_ I wasn’t seeing things. And you got everyone else to go along with your lie, too. Do you have, like, any idea how stupid that made me feel?”

He scooted a few inches away from her, so that they were no longer touching knees. “I didn’t walk into the library that day meaning to lie to you.”

“But you did. And you kept lying to me. Why? I thought…” _Crap, crap, crap._ She did not want to cry right now. “You said we were friends.” Hearing the pathetic vulnerability in her own voice is what did it. Hot tears sprung forth on cue. Once again, she was grateful for the darkness.

“And I meant it,” he said. “It’s just that… How do I say this?” He sighed heavily, and she heard him rub his hands against his face. “You’re a very pretty girl, Kitty,” he mumbled into his palms.

She froze. They had only ever flirted here and there with each other, playing a back-and-forth teasing game without ever actually naming it. They could always claim plausible deniability, but now Kurt had just taken them past that. 

“Do you understand now?” he pleaded.

On reflex, all she could think to say was, “I’m not pretty.”

“Now who’s lying?” He said something else to himself under his breath in German. Then, “Getting the image inducer from the professor, to me, it was like a miracle. This huge barrier that had always been there, between me and other people? Poof. Gone.” The swishing from his tail was more agitated. “I just happened to look like not my usual self when I walked into the library and you saw me. That, truly, was an accident."

"But after that...?" she prompted.

"But after that, yes," he said. "I did make sure it was always on when we hung out."

He met her eyes when he said it, but he didn't exactly sound proud of what he did. Kitty replied, “So you decided to keep your lie going. Even when you knew I was suspicious and asking questions.”

“When was I going to bring it up?” he said, a little too loudly. They both froze for a second, listening for footsteps in the hallway. When nothing came, Kurt continued in a fierce whisper, leaning toward her, “Was I suppose to correct you and say - oh, that terrifying creature of the night you saw, that was actually me?” His accent was getting thicker, the w’s sharpening into v’s. 

“Putting it off only made it worse,” Kitty pointed out. “Like, what was your plan? Hide from me forever?”

“No, of course not,” he mumbled. “I only wanted to put off the moment when you’d run away screaming and never want to look at me again. Is that so bad?”

“You never gave me the chance to prove you wrong, though. Maybe I wouldn't have.” It was like they were right back to their first argument about all of this.

“But I was right,” he argued. “You jump every time I come near you now. In the Blackbird—”

She cut him off. “You mean when you were showing off on the front of a high-speed jet and then teleported right on top of me? Literally, on top of me?”

He started to argue back, so she shoved her hand right through where she thought his face probably was. Phasing always felt like being submerged in warm bathwater, but she sensed it didn’t feel very good for the person being phased through.

“Arghhh!” Kurt wiggled away from her so fast, he toppled off the bed. 

She peered over the edge into the dark, and hissed, “See? How do you like it? Not fun, right? Kinda creepy, right? When someone just does crap like that without warning you first?”

“Ok, ok, I get it, I won’t—”

The space between her bedroom door and the floor suddenly lit up — someone had turned on the light in the hallway. A soft knock on Kitty’s door.

“Kitty?” Jean said on the other side of the door. “Are you all right? I thought I heard a thud.”

Kurt froze, and Kitty sprang over to the door to whisper back through it, “I’m fine. I had a bad dream. I, uh, fell. But seriously, I’m fine.”

“If you’re sure…”

“Yep! Good-night!”

Kitty waited by the door until she heard Jean walk away and saw the hallway light go off. Kurt had pulled himself back up onto the bed, but she could sense he was getting ready to leave, like he hadn’t quite settled in again. But she knew this was the closest they’d gotten to rebuilding this thing between them, and she wasn’t about to call it quits early. Not when they were actually getting a chance to talk things out.

“I’m not going to pretend I wasn’t freaked at first,” she said as she rejoined him back in their previous sitting positions. “All this mutant stuff, it’s still super new to me. And no one told me that some mutants might be—”

“Blue demons?” he said, not without a little bitterness.

“Fuzzy blue elves,” she corrected. He laughed softly. “I needed a couple seconds to recalibrate my brain. But like I said, mostly, I was just angry at you for lying. Coming here was supposed to be the end of being blindsided. And people are _still_ hiding things from me. How can I know what I don't know if no one actually tells me anything?”

Kurt rolled this over in his mind, then asked, “And being creeped out when I teleported near you?”

“It felt like you were rubbing my face in it. Like, you were trying to freak me out.” She wrapped her arms around herself. This was the part she really wasn’t proud of, that she hadn’t even quite admitted to herself yet. “So, maybe I exaggerated a little… in acting freaked out. I shouldn’t have given in to that,” she added quickly. “But it felt like you were always teleporting into my personal bubble, because you wanted that reaction, so that everyone else could see that I was terrible, that you’d been in the right for keeping stuff from me. That… I’m not going to hack it here.”

She couldn’t see his jaw drop in the dark, but that’s what she imagined he was doing. “Kitty, I was doing all that because I thought, maybe if I forced myself to act super normal and no big deal about it, maybe you would see me as normal, too. I wanted to normalize myself to you. I guess I pushed too hard...”

“Honestly, normal went way out the window and like, blasted out of the atmosphere, the first time I phased through the floor in my sleep and woke up in my parents’ basement.”

They were silent for a while. The only sound was Kurt’s tail, whisking through the air. She idly wondered if he was always in control of it - like that time he’d offered her popcorn, holding up the bowl in his tail - or if it usually had a mind of its own.

“I’m sorry,” Kurt said finally. “I… I shouldn’t have lied to you. That wasn't right of me to do to you.”

It was like cool water being thrown over hot coals. “Thanks,” Kitty said, relieved. “I get why you did. I mean, obviously you had your reasons. But it still hurt, you know? So, thank you. For apologizing. And I’m sorry for screaming, the way I kept acting, even after I knew the truth. You’re not scary, Kurt. Not to me.”

As she said it, she knew it was finally true. She wasn't scared of him. A part of her wondered how she ever could have been. _I guess I really am a mutant now,_ she thought. She wasn't sure how to feel about the idea, but there was no denying it and no going back.

More silence in the dark. “So, now that we've both apologized, can we just… do a reset?” Kurt asked.

She perked up at that. “Together this time?”

“Always, Liebchen.”

Even though they were still in the dark, it was like a warm light had come on inside her chest, its glow spreading to every corner. She stuck out her hand, and he took it in his. Holding his hand, it didn’t seem strange anymore. It just seemed like Kurt.

“Hi. I’m Kitty Pryde.” It felt silly to actually re-introduce herself, but she wanted to do this reset properly.

He pulled her hand up to his face and politely placed a fleeting kiss on her knuckles. “Kurt Wagner. It is a pleasure to meet you here in your… dark bedroom in the middle of the night. In our pajamas.”

She laughed. “The pleasure is all mine.” She firmly shook his hand up and down twice, then let go. “There," she said with a smile. "Now we’ve reset.”

“So we have.” He laughed a little to himself, and before teleporting off in a cloud of smoke, said, “You know, I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship.”

As she crawled back into her own bed, Kitty had a feeling Kurt was right. This was definitely the start of something beautiful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't written something just for fun like this in a really long time. Thanks so much for reading!


End file.
